Katya Zubareva:
In the UK in particular, there is a slightly bigger problem than in some of the other European countries with the fact that we have developed an incredible backlog and really significant waiting lists, which already existed before COVID, but have become even worse during COVID. And that means that a lot of patients can't access NHS services, whether it be diagnostics or actual surgery, and or they're not being even referred to those services because they cannot access their GPs in the first place. So there is a very big waiting list, and also an additional hidden waiting list, which is not officially reported, but does exist.
And there are two things we help our clients with here. Firstly, a lot of these patients are choosing to go and pay privately, so just pay out of pocket to get a diagnostic imaging scan or to get a certain type of surgery. And so we help private providers develop appropriate patient propositions, and patients want seemingly very simple things, but somehow things which are not necessarily standard in healthcare as an industry. So they want transparency of pricing, so they want to know how much you're paying upfront for your hip or knee replacement. They want access to financing if they can't afford it otherwise. They want convenience, and that's from being able to book things online to having remote consultations in the run up to your surgery, to parking and access and very basic things like that. But actually there are few providers that have a very holistic patient proposition like that, that can address this increasing demand for private pay healthcare.
There is also another angle which some providers are exploring, which is to make these services more affordable. So if you have cheaper diagnostic imaging scans or cheaper surgeries available to the patient population, then they're more likely to go and actually engage with that and pay out of pocket for them. That's one angle.
The other angle is NHS hospitals are now increasingly collaborating with private providers and wanting to outsource some of their flow to the private hospitals or private operators in the UK. And again, we sometimes help them think through exactly how much of this NHS demand they should be taking on; how much is too much and would not leave enough capacity for their private patients; where to put additional capacity, for example, is another interesting question. So there are some regions which have significantly worse waiting list problems than others. So if a private hospital were to develop new capacity, they might want to go into those regions. And we analyze all the available data in the market; which is very publicly available, luckily, from the NHS; and try to map that supply and demand and balance and where private providers could go in and participate more.
